Podcast: How to be Awake to the Dream

Byron Katie discusses the innate power of The Work with Achim Fassbender of SimplYoga, Houston.

“How are you doing with inquiry?” Katie asks.

“I don’t know what holds me back from really going in to do my Work on abandonment by my father,” Achim says. “Maybe a lack of courage. I’m being protective of that wounded place.”

“When you say you have a ‘lack of courage,'” Katie says, “you’re speaking for the ego. The ego’s life is threatened every time you go into the unknown by questioning your thoughts. It’s the ego’s fear of discovery. We’re talking about identity, the identity of the ego that you see as you, the false self. There’s nothing to lose but the loss of identity. But be gentle with your ego along the way. I don’t do war with the ego. Love is the power. The question ‘Is it true?’ invites you to revelation. Just get still and wait, and expect nothing.”

“I can hit a wall after the revelation,” Achim says. “I don’t know what to do with it.”

“I nurture the revelation,” Katie says. “I don’t take it for granted. I support and honor it. It’s a gift. So what’s next? Just awareness. Be aware of what was revealed to you. Just be with it.”

“It seems that the mind always wants more. For the ego, it’s not good enough until there is some complete resolution.”

“There’s only one complete resolution,” Katie says, “and that is prior to mind/ego. It’s non-duality. We could call it original mind. There’s no opposition to it. It’s music. It’s just living in that revelation you described and having breaks from it if there are other lessons to learn.”

“So is The Work a means to bring us out of the duality, the world of the dreamer?”

“What’s left after ego?”

“Awareness? But that’s what I’ve learned. I haven’t really experienced it. Is awareness experienceable in a way that I will notice? Or will I just become a drop in the ocean, indistinguishable from all the other drops?”

“You just described your life now,” Katie says. “It’s better than that. Physically it could look like tears. I’d call it pure devotion. The need of no other thing. It’s beyond ego. There are not two. It’s completely delighted. It needs no other. It’s creating everything. But that everything is nothing. It’s not capable of sending out anything that is not equal to devotion. It is devotion itself.”

“This is the first time I’m hearing this,” Achim says. “It’s a whole new perspective for me. In the book, you explain that you had to relearn names, relationships, and pretty much everything. But relearning didn’t effect you so that you would slip back into the dream world. Yet you are capable of seeing it from the other side.”

“You could say, I’m simply awake to the dream,” Katie says, “so I see nothing. I love. And there are no consequences. There’s no denial in it. It’s everything.”